'Houston, we have a problem' is right up there with 'Beam me up Scotty' at the top of the spaceflight-related quotations tree. To get the negatives out of the way first, we have been experiencing some teething troubles with our Bendybuses, thought mainly to do with being more used to crawling around London's city streets and now we are expecting them, after being laid idle for a few years in store, to run the London marathon everyday (well, up and down the M61). MAL41 is the only one in service at the moment with MAL53 due back in service next week. Unfortunately, MAL49 is out of use and requires a new engine.
Anyway, the upshot of this is that other buses from the fleet have had to be drafted in to operate Red Rocket journeys. Saturday 30 November was our busiest day so far though and extra buses duplicated the 09:00 from Blackpool with even a Dennis Dart venturing to Manchester! Later in the day, Volvo B10M no.898 operated the last return journey - a bus no stranger to Manchester having started life with Stagecoach Manchester for the busy 192 Piccadilly to Hazel Grove service.
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| 898 works the last departure of the day from Manchester at 20:00 on Sat 30 November |
